November 16, 2006

Rogan, Great Guy, Would Be a Great Judge

I'm late noting that President Bush just nominated former Rep. James Rogan for a federal district-court judgeship in California. He won't be confirmed -- but he should be.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY, 100%) will blue-slip him; if it must be a home-state senator, she'll get Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA, 100%) or Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA, 95%) to do it. You see, Rogan was one of the House Impeachment Manglers in 1998... and one way or another, there'll be "hell to pay." He will never even be given a vote; Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT, 100%), incoming Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, might not even allow him a hearing in the committee (by just refusing to bring him up).

But that's not why I'm writing this. There are a bunch of district- and circus-court nominees who will never get up or down votes, but I usually leave blogging about them to brilliant lawyers like Patterico and the greats at Power Line.

I'm writing this for one reason, a very personal reason to hold James Rogan in the highest esteem: I am convinced that, were it not for him, my wife, Sachi, would not be an American citizen today.

I've written about this before; the INS's capriciousness and thuggishness is one reason I get very angry at people who say that anyone who has ever entered this country illegally is a "criminal" who should be "prosecuted" and forever barred citizenship.

First, I want to make one thing perfectly clear: Sachi was never illegal; she came here legally as a student for one year -- then she went back to Japan. A year later, she returned, this time as an immigrant. She was able to get a green card and was satisfied with that for a number of years.

We skip to the 1990s. When Sachi and I started going together, she told me that, although she was born in Japan and grew up there, living in Japan until she was about 20, she had never really felt Japanese; she always felt like "a stranger, and afraid, trapped in a world I never made," as A.E. Houseman put it.

When she came here first as a student, she abruptly realized she had always been an American. And when she returned to Japan, it hit her that she could no longer live in the land of her birth; she had outgrown it. (She actually outgrew it years earlier, but she couldn't diagnose the feeling then.)

"All right," I asked, "so you've been living here for years now as a legal permanent resident. Why haven't you become an American citizen?"

That brought her up cold: it's a very, very hard thing to become a citizen of a new country, because that requires you to publicly renounce citizenship in your native country. She had been scared what her parents would think, what her ancestors would think, and -- well, it's a scary step. But she realized she couldn't continue living as "half an American" merely out of fear. So she embarked upon the journey to citizenship.

I've talked about that dreadful experience many times, and I won't go into it again here. Except for one part of it -- which you can take as exemplifying the whole. At the very end, Sachi had satisfied all the requirements, passed all the tests, filled out all the forms, waited years and years, battled her way to the head of the line, and all completely legally. She only needed one more step to actually become a citizen: to hold her hand up and be sworn in (I usually say "be sworn at," but I'm not trying to be a joker today).

All she needed was an appointment. At those appointments, held at some federal building in the area, about two hundred people at a time are sworn in; it's not like there are no slots. But the INS (this was before they became the USCIS) would not give Sachi her appointment.

Nor did they give her a reason. Rather, they said there was no reason, she was good to go. But they wouldn't let her go!

For months, she called nearly every day; for months, they told her that "the system" hadn't spit out a date for her yet. Then the months became years... literally years. Every so often during this time, some document she had filled out before "expired," forcing her to come in and fill it out all over again. The kicker was when she was told that her fingerprints had expired, and she would have to get a new set taken.

Oddly enough, they looked just the same.

But still -- no appointment. She got a lawyer, and the lawyer couldn't get the INS either to budge or to say if there were some problem: she had never been in any trouble (not even a ticket), there was no reason. Even the INS insisted there was no reason; but they had "submitted" her case to "the system," and nobody had any idea what was happening. Nor did they care; they just told her to shut up and go away, she was holding up the line.

Finally, somebody -- I don't remember who, but it was probably Friend Lee -- suggested to me that we should contact Sachi's congressman, who was also Friend Lee's congressman. So we went to the office of Rep. James Rogan.

He personally wasn't there (Congress was in session); but his staffer talked to Sachi, took down all the information, and said that Rogan would have the case in his hands within two weeks. In fact, I think it was less than that before we received a phone call from the staffer, who said that Rep. Rogan had called the INS during a break from floor action, kicked some butt -- and we would be hearing from them within a couple of days.

A few (working) days later, Sachi received a letter giving her an appointment to go down and (all right, all right!) get sworn at by a federal magistrate.

Think about that: for more than three years, Sachi and I were unable to get her a swearing-ceremony date, even though the INS admitted that she had satisfied all requirements; but less than three weeks after contacting James Rogan, she had her date. I am utterly convinced that, were it not for his intervention, the INS would never have moved... because when it comes right down to it, they just don't care.

But James Rogan did care -- and that's why he made a great legislator, a great House manager during the impeachment, and would make a great federal judge, though he'll never get a chance at the latter due to Hillary's essentially vengeful and narcissistic nature.

Oh, there is one thing he didn't care about: nobody at his office ever asked Sachi whether she considered herself a Republican or a Democrat. She was a constituent; that was enough.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, November 16, 2006, at the time of 5:05 PM

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Why would I mind? I love Patterico's site, though I still think he and his wife Patterica are too perfect: I believe they are elves. Or maybe cyborgs.

We went to a German place with them once, and they were amazed that Sachi and I could each down the trash-can sized mug of Spaten beer we each ordered. They sipped at their buttercup-sized demi-hemi-semi-giraffes of beer, and I think Patterica left half of hers unsipped.

She kept nervously glancing at us out of the corner of her eye, as if afraid Sachi would start dancing on the table and that I would take off my shirt and begin whooping like an Indian. Honestly, there was a lot of food! We were fine.

At the end of the meal, neither Patterico nor Patterica had a spot anywhere on him or her, and neither did the kids (who didn't have any beer). I'll bet their kids are tops in their classes, too, and head straight for Princeton, skipping high school when the time comes.

People like Patterico and Patterica (if they are "people") always make me nervous and self-conscious: I squirm around, trying to manipulate the menu to cover up the gravy spots on my once-white Mickey Mouse shirt, and feeling like I should have dropped thirty or forty pounds that day before going out with them. I feel distinctly dumpy.

And I become uncomfortably aware that I haven't cut my fingernails in several days, and that I've never had a manicure in my entire life and am not exactly sure what one is. (Never mind, forget I said anything.)

In twenty years -- or sixteen, if the breaks are right -- Patterico or Patterica will probably end up as Attorney General of the United States. Or maybe they could both have the job simultaneously, sort of co-generals. There is precedent higher up the chain.

Thank you for further confirmation that Mrs. Patterico and I are related. Patterico has claimed that Mrs. Patterico is one of the most beautiful women in the world and I have no reason to doubt him. My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world without doubt. My mother is also very clean and neat, one could even say fastidious, and now you say the Patterico family is as well. Ipso facto(?), one more piece of proof that Mrs. Patterico is a relative of my mother's.

Seriously, I had an experience very similar to yours which, unlike you, I am not allowed to relate with detail. "Yes, we can help you. This staff member handles these types of cases". It made me proud of my elected official and our country. In sharp contrast to "pay to play" Murtha and his coyness in the Abscam tapes.

I liked Rogan and couldn't figure out why he didn't get reelected; Clinton would have been impeached even without the efforts of Rogan. Who is the current congressman for that district, and what is Rogan doing now?

I’m sure Mr. Rogan is a fine upstanding citizen and a prince of a guy. But I have a feeling what he did for you is pretty common for Congressmen. I think they call it “constituent service.”

I see that nk had a similar episode. So did I:

Back in the Bronze Age, my wife and I were married in Mexico. For our “honeymoon” we stayed in the Sheraton Hotel right next door to the US Embassy in Mexico City. We did all the paperwork, met with all the right bureaucrats, and were led to believe that she would be able to fly to the States with me a week later -- or at most a week or so after that.

Well, I flew home alone, and several weeks later we were getting desperate. (Ok, it’s not the years-long ordeal you guys endured. But we were young, in love and -- well, never mind.)

I finally contacted the local office of one of our senators. He was a Democrat and one of the party’s leaders, for whom I didn’t vote and with whom I shared essentially no political positions.

Two days later, my wife received a call from the embassy. “Oh, Mrs. E, we need to see you right away.” She had an appointment with the appropriate person the next day. During the meeting, she happened to spot a Telex (that was one of our primitive Bronze Age communications methods -- it replaced smoke signals) from the senator on the bureaucrat’s desk.

I don’t remember the timing after that, but she got her green card almost immediately and she arrived here very shortly thereafter. I think it was less than a week after my phone call to the senator.

Just a little pressure from the right politician can move mountains.

The above hissed in response by: Dick E at November 16, 2006 9:37 PM

The following hissed in response by: Big D

You know, this is weird.

Anyone get the uncomfortable sense of...patronage here? Of the king riding his chariot through the streets, tossing gold coins to the starving masses?

I'm not arguing that what the representatives did was wrong, but that it is very wrong that they had to do it in the first place. And wrong that the servants jump for the masters, but not for the public. One problem fixed, but the 99 who didn't complain to the congressmen are left unresolved.

One problem fixed, but the 99 who didn't complain to the congressmen are left unresolved.

Hence my passion for reforming the legal immigration system to make it more consistent, more predictable, and more just.

Alas, in the entire immigration debate, nobody has even discussed this aspect. Yet the arbitrary injustice, malign vindictiveness, bureaucratic sloth, and caprice of the INS/USCIS is I believe the prime factor driving the huge level of illegal immigration into this country.

It's like prattling on and on about school reform without ever once mentioning the grave problem of massive teacher incompetence.

Yet the arbitrary injustice, malign vindictiveness, bureaucratic sloth, and caprice of the INS/USCIS is I believe the prime factor driving the huge level of illegal immigration into this country.

A factor? Sure. “The prime factor?” No way.

Under current law, very few foreigners lacking US sponsors can get visas for either temporary work or permanent residency. The demand for visas vastly exceeds the supply. For many countries, people trying to get US visas face a waiting list that is literally years long (due to quotas, not bureaucratic bumbling). So lots of folks, knowing that they have essentially no chance of immigrating legally, break the law and come anyway.

With respect to immigration (not change of status cases like Sachi’s), USCIS incompetence, etc., affects only those few people trying to enter the US legally and willing to stand in line.

If the law were changed to allow lots more immigrants, and if the USCIS dropped the ball processing those applications, then any further massive illegal immigration might be laid at USCIS’ doorstep.

So what is the prime factor? Well, where do most illegal immigrants hail from? Mexico. Why do they come here? To find work.

Mexico’s dysfunctional economy doesn’t provide enough jobs, especially for the poor. The government sees its illegal émigrés as a safety valve keeping unemployment from going even higher. And the remittances they send home to their families are one of Mexico’s top sources of foreign exchange. So the authorities occasionally huff and puff about helping us control illegal immigration, but they actually like the current situation just fine. Not that they wouldn’t actually like to have a better economy, but the status quo is so much easier.

Similar factors are at work in other countries too, but the numbers are much smaller.

Under current law, very few foreigners lacking US sponsors can get visas for either temporary work or permanent residency. The demand for visas vastly exceeds the supply. For many countries, people trying to get US visas face a waiting list that is literally years long (due to quotas, not bureaucratic bumbling). So lots of folks, knowing that they have essentially no chance of immigrating legally, break the law and come anyway.

If you simply mean the problem isn't just the USCIS per se but also the immigration laws passed (and not passed) by Congress, I will accept the correction as true but fairly picayune.

My point is that the very nature of the immigration laws and the bureaucracy that is charged with enforcing them are the primary culprits behind the mass wave of illegal immigration. We should be letting in a lot more people -- but screening them much more carefully. This means spending a lot more money, but it's worth the cost.

Labor competition is good for the economy. Driving down the prices for fairly low-skill labor (picking strawberries) is good, because it encourages people to improve themselves to get better jobs (especially those who have the advantage of speaking English). Jobs in construction, for example, or even waiting table.

For the same reason, I welcomed the Japanese "invasion" of the American automobile market, and I have no problem with Indian companies in Bangalore capturing a larger market share of software.

I guess I can accept your conclusion (although I might quibble about how much immigration to allow), but I can’t understand how your previous post could be remotely interpreted to mean that the laws, and not the USCIS, are a significant problem.

Read it again:

Yet the arbitrary injustice, malign vindictiveness, bureaucratic sloth, and caprice of the INS/USCIS is I believe the prime factor driving the huge level of illegal immigration into this country.

So it’s picayune to have not understood that this diatribe against the USCIS really meant that the immigration laws were out of whack? True, you did mention "reforming the legal immigration system", but read in context it sure sounds like your target was the USCIS, not legislation.

I would still submit that the action (or inaction) of the USCIS is a relative non-issue with respect to illegal immigration. But if you’re talking about about changes in status for immigrants, legal or not, who are already here, then it’s a whole other kettle of salamanders.

The above hissed in response by: Dick E at November 18, 2006 1:37 AM

The following hissed in response by: MarkD

Things must have gotten worse over time. I married my wife in Japan in December of 1976, and her visa was ready in time for her to come to the US with me in February of 1977. Of course, we already had a stack of papers several inches thick by the time two governments, the US Marine Corps, and the Catholic Church said OK.

I have to say that my experience was totally different from Dafydd's. We experienced no problems whatsoever through immigration or when Mrs D became a citizen.

I know others, some even who came here after Sachi, who breezed right through with no problems at all. Yet I also know several whose experiences were even more grotesque and with far more lasting consequences.

Mark, that is the main point: the current legal immigration system is capricious, arbitrary, and wide open to vindictiveness and petty cruelty on the part of the bureaucrats involved.

If the luck of the draw gives you a conscientious immigration worker, everything goes swimmingly. But in the more likely event of a bored drudge just serving his time -- or worse, someone who woke up on the wrong side of the tracks that morning -- your attempt to immigrate can become a living nightmare.

We need a system that is above all predictable: where you know going in about how long it will take, what exactly you must do, and what you cannot do. If you do those things and have no problems in your background, you will get residency, permanent residency, or citizenship.

We need a system that is efficient, not one where you are told to hand in a set of documents... and then eight months later, you are told that your case is delayed because you didn't hand in another one -- which the letter they sent before never even mentioned.

And above all, we need a system that is just: where those excluded, rejected, or deported are precisely those who should be, because they are undesirables; and the rest are not subject to the petty whims of bureaucrats who hate their jobs and believe that if they themselves must suffer, they're jolly well going to make sure everybody else suffers, too.

We need enough agents that we can process the line faster than people join it, even if that means five times as many USCIS workers as we have now. We need immigration cards with biometrics, either on the card itself or in a central database accessed via the ID number on the card, so we can automate as much immigrant identification as possible:

The immigrant wants to cross the border; he steps in a booth, flashes his card, puts his hand on a glass plate; the videos snap his face and profile; and if he is who the card says he is, the opposite door opens and he's through in three seconds.

If there's a problem, a different door opens and he goes for an interview. This works both directions across the border... and the database keeps track of whether a particular immigrant is inside or outside the country: if he tries to enter without having previously left (or vice versa), the interview door opens so we can figure out what's going on.

We need to coordinate this universal immigration database with the National Crime Information Center, which itself should be connected to every police computer in every state, county, and city in the United States. And also connected with university computers, if we still want to have student visas.

(I presonally would do away with different types of visas -- tourist, student, work -- leaving only two: a temporary visa that expires after X number of days, and a permanent visa, equivalent to a green card. During your legal stay here, you would be able to do anything legal; that is, you could work, even if you only had a 30-day visa.)

We must give preference to those who share American values, however we choose to measure that: testing, interview, work history, fluency in English, and so forth. After the values test, we should privilege those with more education... but the values question should be the most important; I'd rather have an uneducated guy who loves America and will be a great gardener than a clown with a PhD who is an avid acolyte of Noam Chomsky.

And I think we need more immigrants, not fewer... so long as the people we're bringing in are ripe for assimilation -- and not dangerous terrorists or narcocriminals.

Our biggest problem is not that there are eleven million illegal aliens here, nor that we allow Mexicans to come in and pick strawberries. Our biggest problem is that our immigrant system, like Topsy, just grew; it was never properly designed or up to the task of handling mass numbers of immigrants.

We have a static, COBOL immigration system in an evolving, open-source world.

It worked well enough in the late 1800s and early 1900s because we got lucky: those entering the country from Eastern Europe by and large had American values and were eager to assimilate. But now we're letting in a bunch of people who have no interest in joining American society... and we're arbitrarily excluding or roughing up folks who would make fine, fine Americans.

And I suspect we're letting a lot of terrorist sleeper agents in as well, because our system is so messed up we can't even tell.

We need a massive overhaul of the legal immigration system... and so far, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats has so much as thought about the matter.

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